News

iPod plugin for Winamp 5 released

“With the release of the iPod Support Plug-in for Winamp 5 you can finally start using that PC formatted iPod for something other than a stylish paper weight.

Installing the plug-in will add an iPod device listing to your Winamp Media Library. Then all you have to do is connect your iPod to your PC, point Winamp to the drive letter that your iPod was assigned, and start sending your MP3 or M4A tracks from your PC to your hip little portable device. Winamp will also play tracks directly from your iPod so you can take your collection to a friends house and blast your tunes in style without ever having to touch his/her dirty dirty hard drive. You can even free up space of your own hard drive by deleting useless programs like iTunes and Music Match.

Will the overt sexiness of Nullsoft innovation ever end? No. No it won’t.”

Let me know how y’all get on with this plugin - we’ll all be interested in how well it works…

Comments

1

Yeah, iTunes is “useless”. It’s so useless now that I can use WinAmp to synchronize my music collection, rate songs, display album art, rip and encode in AAC, download songs from the iTunes store, handle my contacts, and create playlists. Wow. WinAmp is really amazing. What am I missing here?

Posted by huh in Irvine, CA on February 26, 2004 at 11:53 AM (CST)

1

Not to mention, there’s no way to sort by disc with this plug-in, which makes it pretty useless imo.

Posted by dave in Irvine, CA on February 26, 2004 at 11:55 AM (CST)

1

honestly I used to be a diehard winamp fan but iTunes blows it away. Im not sure about the actually resource usage on the new build of winamp but i know the older ones used very little CPU power. This was always the draw for me along with the simple interface, but lets face it, iTunes is a much more featured app and the bottom line is that the organization of my music is the most important thing. iTunes may be a little more resource hungry but i can find any song in iTunes in a matter of seconds. not to mention all of the features that huh mentioned. i find all of my pc owning friend deleting useless programs like winamp.

Posted by heresjohnny in Irvine, CA on February 26, 2004 at 12:05 PM (CST)

1

dave, have you ever tried to search function? It’s AMAZINGLY fast. Can someone tell me how to do it with WinAmp?

1

1

I have 40000 files, music and video. iTunes chokes, both the PC and Mac version. WinAmp is just messy. Media Center searches through like lightning.

Posted by I prefer in Irvine, CA on February 26, 2004 at 12:22 PM (CST)

1

Sure, iTunes might have it’s music store… But that’s about all it has over Winamp. Of course, I run a site called Winamp Unlimited, just to put my bias on the table before I go on.

I’m not trying to say iTunes is a bad application. It works great for a lot of people and is pretty easy to use. But it just doesn’t have the kind of “power under the hood” that Winamp has. More advanced media players like Winamp and even Foobar make iTunes look like a toy.

Some people feel the iTunes interface is sexy—that’s all subjective. But iTunes’ GUI is limiting. iTunes doesn’t even begin to approach the kind of customization Winamp has in terms of skinning functionality and diversity. Off the top of my head, there’s Invicta and Space Invaders, two drastically different looks and feels. A quick search for “iTunes Skins” on Google brings up this. I’m sorry, that’s just embarassing.

And what about iTunes (Windows) selection of plug-ins? OGG support was barely pulled off. The amount of community support and extensibility that has been added to Winamp is incredible. You can play nearly any format you can think of. You can control Winamp with your phone. You can even do p2p-style filesharing with the media library.

And then there’s speed, the powerful/customizable Media library & playlist views, internet TV, AVS that blows everything else away, etc… All of that functionality, and the file size manages to still be almost 5 times less than iTunes bloated installer.

Many people don’t need those kind of levels of controls; iTunes would work perfectly for them. But for people who like having more options open to them, or like to have their media player conform to their wants and needs (instead of having their wants and needs limited to iTunes’ capabilities), programs like Foobar or Winamp are the better choice.

Posted by eric in Irvine, CA on February 26, 2004 at 2:28 PM (CST)

1

ok so yea i have used winamp all of my msuic listening life and i have never had a prob with it…there are no question more plugins, options, skins, and just plain old support…but i now am sold on i tuens….its style and simplicity is so much bettter and just has small features that make it amazing…every time friends come over to chill they play with itunes and comment on how i wish winamp did this or thats a sweet feature…i have yet to sell any of them on it but some day they will give in….but jsut for the record when apple goes under b/c of teh apple apple lawsuit ill go right back to winamp…

and yea i tunes is a bit behind with some options and internet choices as well as a merge of quicktime and ituens…but its still el rey!!!

Posted by rivlinm in Irvine, CA on February 26, 2004 at 3:59 PM (CST)

1

Sound from iTunes leaves a LOT to be desired.

Yeah, it’s better for organisational purposes, but I use my players for their SOUND reproduction,

iTunes can’t even push 5.1. Sure, it’s a good app, but from a purely musical standpoint, I personally don’t think it’s even close.

Posted by doctorjuggles in Irvine, CA on February 26, 2004 at 5:04 PM (CST)

1

I much prefer WinAmp as a media player, espicially given the huge range of visualizations that you can use with it, you even get a huge pile of visualizations with it in the form of AVS. The iTunes visualization is just pants compared to AVS. iTunes is great for iPod synching but thats about all I use it for, that and editing ID3 tags, an area where Winamp sill leaves a lot to be desired. The music store isn’t available here so that’s a non-starter of an argument from my point of view and even if it were I wouldn’t use it due to the DRM and the fact that WinAmp can’t play the DRM wrapped AAC files.

I use CDEX for ripping as I like the control over the output you get with it, WinAmp for playing music on the computer and iTunes for synching and ID3 tag editing.

Posted by Fenn in Irvine, CA on February 26, 2004 at 6:12 PM (CST)

1

Media Center has a WYSIWYG visualizations editor that rules. I would pay money for that as a sep application. You can easily create your own visualizations or modify existing ones.

I remember when the only visualizations around were from Cthugha - WinAmp was a breath of fresh air for synaesthesiasts everywhere.

Posted by viz guy in Irvine, CA on February 26, 2004 at 7:47 PM (CST)

1

WTF, are we talking about winamp or the plug-in? Could have sworn we were discussing the plug in. I don’t think anyone here will disagree with you when you say winamp is more customizable, but for use with the ipod, it just doesn’t compare to itunes. The reasons are plenty and have already been said.

Try and stick to topic.

Posted by dave in Irvine, CA on February 26, 2004 at 8:44 PM (CST)

1

Used to be a Winamp fan, never touch it since iTunes came out.

The ‘skin customization’ thing means a lot to people, and that’s fine, but I can’t see how that’s such a major draw. I’m far more interested in spending time listening to my music than making the player look pretty. Same for visualizations. Same for playing video.

The iTunes interface is ‘sexy’, but IMO most of that is how it blends smart looks with easy usability design. Winamp feels clunky to me when it comes to really managing large volumes of MP3s.

And with the new version of Winamp you have to _buy_ to be able to rip CDs to mp3… Come on. That should be a given. I understand they have to pay their developers… But a _big_ draw for me with iTunes is that it does what I need in a jukebox _without_ additional downloads. And it’s free. Rad.

Posted by john in Irvine, CA on February 26, 2004 at 9:29 PM (CST)

1

We’re talking about winamp WITH the plug-in installed. To each his/her own when it comes to which program you’ll use.

Personally, I agree with eric wholeheartedly. iTunes just seems so limiting (with the ipod) and the interface (imo) is lame. I switched to iTunes a month ago just to see how it worked with my iPod and I think I’m going to switch back to XPlay. Give me a Windows Explorer interface anyday (which you can browse by artist, genre, etc.).

If you need the music store, then great. But iTunes is the most popular because Apple obviously force feeds it to people getting an iPod. For basic stuff, it does the job. Don’t mean to offend, just want to say.

Posted by Andrew in Irvine, CA on February 26, 2004 at 10:54 PM (CST)

1

You can browse in iTunes by those same things—just hit Browse—and under View Options you can reveal additional columns to sort by.

Posted by Nagromme in Irvine, CA on February 27, 2004 at 3:05 AM (CST)

1

The fact that Winamp has such functionality and ‘power under the hood’ is great , when it works. I used to use Winamp 2.86 instead of Windows Medaia Player and it was Ok, a bit buggy, but Ok. THen Winamp 3 came out, with all those cool skins. It worked about 10% of the time, it froze, skipped, chugged, made the rest of the PC chug, froze the entire computer sometimes, so I deleted it.
Then iTunes for Windows was released and I got an iPod. iTunes 4.2 is rock solid, fast, does not have to load up ID3 tags every time u open it, and lets you browse and organise you music a lot more efficiently. And has natural iPod syncing ability. And I dont care how good Winamp 5 is, Nullsoft lost any of my interest a long time ago. Oh yeah, and Nullsoft are arrogant Pr**ks

Posted by Nuke666 in Irvine, CA on February 27, 2004 at 3:45 AM (CST)

1

My apologies, if I derailed the discussion.

I personally don’t use the Winamp plug-in for my iPod. I much prefer Ephpod over any of the current alternatives, mostly because it (you guessed it…) gives you more options. I may however switch to it.

Though the plug-in was originally put out by Nullsoft but not officially supported, it is open source and still being actively developed. There’s a long discussion in the WA forums that follows the dev process of the plug-in so far, and Will is working out the quirks and trying to add new features.

John - You can rip to OGG and AAC/MP4 free. You can also rip to MP3 with 3rd party plug-ins. While I can understand that some people prefer not to have to download additions, many of the best applications today are moving towards this practice as a standard, Winamp and Mozilla/Firebird being notable examples.

Nuke666 - I went with Winamp 5 over iTunes for the same reasons: It was rock solid, fast, and had the added bonus of flexibility. As for Nullsoft being arrogant, I suppose sarcasm is a lot more difficult to convey over the ‘net. At least they never went so far as to seriously proclaim their product as “The Best Window Application Ever.”

Posted by eric in Irvine, CA on February 27, 2004 at 6:39 AM (CST)

1

personally i lost the topic of this a good few comments back. i used to be a hardcore winamp user because of what it had and boasted over all the other players…speed. like nuke666 said, i downloaded winamp3 and it was the worst thing i ever used. not that this discouraged me from using it (winamp in general) as i stil have winamp 2 installed and if i just wana hear one track il laod it through winamp. however, winamp is/was about speed, thats whyi used it. it consumed little processor power and loaded really fast. now, i cant say iv had experience with anything beyond winamp 3 so things may have changed. but personally, i like iTunes over anything, just cos it does stuff i need it to do.

and im not bothered about visuals, or maxi combo phone controlling text dial p2p speed broadcasting varifocal controls or whatever you want to call it, winamp defies what it used to be, which was speed, end of story

Posted by silver_haze20 in Irvine, CA on February 27, 2004 at 9:05 AM (CST)

1

OK, perhaps I should RTFM, but will someone please answer me 2 questions: can you make playlists on WinAMP and save them to the iPod? Can you make SmartPlayLists on WinAMP and likewise, save them to the iPod?

Posted by huh in Irvine, CA on February 27, 2004 at 9:51 AM (CST)

1

A question to all of you - does it really matter one freakin bit that Winamp does this and iTunes does that and that you use this over that? THEY ARE BOTH FREE!! F R E E !!! So use whatever the hell you want to - but don’t bash either one cause they both work great!!!